Did Saudi Arabia Just Gun Down A Boat Full Of Somali Refugees?

Evidence perceived seems to show that Saudi Arabia was likely responsible for gunning down a boat full of Somali refugees trying to flee war-torn Yemen, murdering at least 42 people.

The boat was en route to Sudan through the Bab-el-Mandeb, a strait between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, Foreign Policy reported.

More than forty people including women and children were shot dead aboard a boat carrying 140 Somali refugees in the Red Sea off war-torn Yemen, officials said.

The refugees were struck by weapons fire in the waters off rebel-held Hodeida, but the boat managed to dock in the city’s port, an official there said.

A witness told Al Jazeera that an Apache helicopter was responsible for the attack.

“They shot at us, we could see the flashes of bullets. We were shouting at them to hear us. Signaling with lights, but they kept shooting. The Apache came above us and shot at us. Our friends were dying,” Al-Hassan Ghaleb Mohammed, a survivor, told Al Jazeera.

However, survivors conveyed conflicting accounts of who may have been behind the attack.

“We do not know who carried it out, but survivors said they came under attack from another boat at 9 p.m., the crew used lights and shouted to signal this is a civilian boat,” Iolanda Jaguemet, ICRC spokesperson, told Reuters news agency.

“Nevertheless it did not have any effect and a helicopter joined in the attack.”

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack. Although, according to more than one witness the attack was committed by an Apache helicopter, so we can determine which countries may have been responsible by using Deagel.com, a site that lists each countries military equipment.